Publisher DTP Crew

This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. This series of 4 segments features Larry Lessig, a Stanford Law professor who has completely changed the nature of intellectual property by giving legal structure to the Free Culture movement. Lessig is featured here as a keynote speaker at the huge FISL 5 conference that took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in June 2004. Lessig is introduced here in Brazilian Portuguese by Claudio Prado, the Brazilian government's coordinator of all things touching on Brazil's Free Open Source Software initiatives.

Lessig is one of the founders of the Creative Commons movement and author of the book, "The Future of Ideas". The Creative Commons is both a non-profit organization and a social movement. "The Future of Ideas" is one of the books upon which the Digital Tipping Point film project is based, so we are thrilled to feature Professor Lessig in our video. Lessig is certainly one of the more electifying public speakers in the English language today.

The Creative Commons non-profit organization is dedicated to fostering collaboration among musicians, writers, filmmakers, graphic artists, and any other artist whose work can be rendered digitally. As Larry Lessig explains in these 4 segments, the Creative Commons offers these artists a way to more easily share their ideas without worrying about being sued. Lessig and his co-founders of the Creative Commons created a series of licenses that artists can easily attach to their works to tell other artists how they can use their works. If musicians want to let other musicians use their music to build on their own songs, the Creative Commons licenses provide the musicians an easy way to tell other musicians how their music can be used. The Creative Commons licenses have facilitated an explosion of creativity around the world, and these series of 4 segments give Larry Lessig's summary of what the Creative Commons is, and how it works.

It is no accident that the Digital Tipping Point film uses a Creative Commons license.

Nor is it an accident that the Creative Commons has worked its way into the very fabric of the Internet Archive, the very tool that the Digital Tipping Point crew uses to share its video with you. The Internet Archive just would not have the same level of energy without the Creative Commons that Larry Lessig describes in these clips.

In these 4 clips, Professor Lessig says that the Creative Commons was built on the idea of copyleft that Richard Stallman created with the GPL, which is the license under which GNU-Linux is distributed. (GNU-Linux is sometimes just called "Linux". The Internet Archive runs on GNU-Linux. The Linux mascot is a penguin called "Tux", which is why there is a penguin in the foreground on Lessig's podium). Lessig then credits Gilberto Gil for giving him the idea of a remix license and sampling license. He says that the crackdown on creativity in copyright in the US started 30 years ago, and got really bad 10 years ago (meaning in 1995). He quotes MPAA President Jack Valenti as saying that illegal copying is like terrorism. He says that the important thing is to make sure that the technologies of mass copying will be allowed to extend the creative potential to the widest possible reach to stimulate innovation. He stresses that almost all creative works are built on other creative works, and that the "future of idea" and the future of innovation is based on fostering this kind of collaboration, rather than stifling it, as current US copyright law does. Lessig says that the most important step taken toward this end began outside the US. He says that the US needs to be reminded by Brazilians what freedom means. He says that the US has lost a fundamental understanding of what freedom means in regard to free expression because of the power of the big record labels and the big movie studios.

All of the segments for Larry Lessig's Porto Alegre speech are here:

http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv095_pa_07_lessig_001.ogg (segment 01)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv095_pa_08_lessig_002.ogg (segment 02)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv095_pa_09_lessig_003.ogg (segment 03)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv095_pa_10_lessig_004.ogg (segment 04)

This footage is raw rough edited video. It lacks music and transitions and special effects. This footage is ths source code upon which the DTP film will be built. We invite you to use it as you see fit, as long as you comply with the Creative Commons license given on this page.

If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeld@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at digitaltippingpoint.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_095

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 001, Larry Lessig at FISL Con 5
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Thanks for viewing our video!

Contact Information Christian Einfeldt, einfeldt at g mail dot com